When Fashion and Technology Collide

With life getting busier every day, a new online style service will save you precious time and ensure you head to the stores with an informed shopping choice in hand. www.truly.co.nz enables customers to tailor their clothing choices based on individual profiles and preferences. Rather than buying online, Truly sorts through hundreds of garments from selected designers and retailers, and presents a collection of the ones that best suit the customer and can be found in local stores. For example Suzy has long slender legs but has narrow shoulders, so skinny jeans will rate highly for her figure type, but any tops with a raglan (a sloping) sleeve will rate low or even negatively as they will make her shoulders appear even narrower.

Truly developer Sharlene Camp says that each customer virtually has their own personalized fashion catalogue as Truly has not only culled all garments that aren't going to look good on them, but helps them sort out which ones are going to look great, so they can head to the fitting room with focus. It is simple it means you don't have to feel overwhelmed by the number of garments in each store and the number of stores. It also means that the salesperson in the store can be there to guide you, but you are already forearmed with some selections and an idea about what you are interested in trying on. Internationally similar sites such as www.myshape.com have been introduced. Where Truly provides an individual profile, My Shape categorizes each individual into one of seven body types even after extensive "measuring" is required by the user and all purchases must be made online. There is also talk of other companies such as Intelifit using body scanners to take individuals measurements at shopping malls and airports, however one of the major barriers of this is that the manufacturers need to then rationalize this information against their garments. As the former general manager of Dunedin's successful Fashion Incubator Ms Camp was fortunate to work with up and coming designers creating some exceptional pieces. What Truly does is bring together many of those designers with the customers that will best suit their product, enabling them to head to the fitting room with garments that are Truly them. Ends. Sharlene Camp Email: info@truly.co.nz Phone 021 146 0571 P O Box 12649, Hamilton www.truly.co.nz